


ours stars will guide each other to new (brighter) dawns

by LittleBlackGoldfish



Series: Bemily Week 2021 [6]
Category: Pitch Perfect (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Dancing, F/F, discussion of science fiction pejoratives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-19 09:28:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29624193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBlackGoldfish/pseuds/LittleBlackGoldfish
Summary: Married and heading off on their honeymoon Beca takes Emily 'dancing.'Sequel to Day 5 of Bemily Week 2020Bemily Week 2021 Day 6 - Dancing
Relationships: Emily Junk/Beca Mitchell
Series: Bemily Week 2021 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2173860
Kudos: 13





	ours stars will guide each other to new (brighter) dawns

**Author's Note:**

> Honestly, this ended up being just an excuse for me to play around with made up languages and stuff. This probably makes no sense if you haven't read Day 5 of Bemily Week 2020.

Emily's stomach lurches as the weight lifts off their chest.

It didn't last long.

Just a handful of seconds later Beca was putting the little skiff through another series of looping, high-g burns; too small to mount a proper torsion engine, it's single fusion torch was not gentle. Emily was coming to understand why Stacie did most of the flying.

"Dancing is. Supposed. To. Involve lots of. Skin on skin."

Beca laughs and Emily revelled in the sound. Their spouse. They were still getting used to that.

Again the pressure eases off, though she keeps them in a coasting burn, swinging wide around _Theo's Red Rocket_ (the name of Beca's yacht). Off in the distance they could still make out the twinkle of Ushas and all its shoal, just barely, less than a few hours away.

"We did your kind of dancing. I never learned any of the _really_ fun terran or martian ones. That just left this kind."

"Exactly who dances in spaceships?"

No one Emily has ever heard of. Races were one thing. Pushing yourself and your machine to see how fast you could go, if you could beat the rest of the pack by being smarter or more reckless or just timing things better makes a certain kind of sense.

This flipping and swoop and whirling and end over end rolling does not.

Of course they've also never been farther from home than one of the shoal's trawlers. Beca had.

"Spacers, honey, real ones," their spouse says, "Rock choppers and ice hoppers call it _ohj-zi tapag_."

Oh. She meant those ten thousand scattered nomad fleets that swung between the inner and outer belts carving up whatever chunk of orbital debris they could get their hands on. Never settling or sticking to a proper orbit.

It was only out on the trawlers and picket ships that they ever touched the shoals. Emily had never thought to try learning cje cje. Why would they? Couldn't even really call them a proper people, too far flung.

But, again, Beca apparently had.

That had not been in the official Imperial biographies.

"I didn't know you'd visited the _otopeloikis_."

A beat, then, "Mollusc lovers?"

They have been practicing Beca's polta together since the wedding, now just under thirteen days and seventeen hours ago, so that they have something beside unicola and Emily's incredibly rough imperial to converse in. She has come along quite nicely, apparently she has something of a gift.

"Not quite," Emily says, though she doesn't quite know how to translate it, "A bit more like 'mollusc,' ah, 'fucker?' No," it sounds more insulting in unicola than they imagined it would, "Someone who enjoys something too much, turns it into their whole life? Like an unnatural obsession.

"Huh."

Suddenly they feel a blush creeping up their cheeks.

Here was Beca sharing a piece of a culture she'd taken the time to learn about, that she probably had friends in, and Emily had very casually said something they were now realizing was probably racist. Very much not cool.

"You know they call you guys 'half-assers?'"

A sharp leftward burn jams them into the side. Shame burns on their cheeks and they can't bring themselves to say anything.

" 'Course it's a lot more insulting in cje cje; _ippe-gol_. Literally means 'someone without the brains to finish a task.' Which is nothing next to what they call martians and terrans, " Beca eases off again, complete this time, and leaves them in complete zero-g for several seconds, " _Sjet-zi apang_ , a lot of cheap translation algorithms will give you something like 'waddler' or 'bow-legged walker,' but it really means someone 'walking around with shit in their pants.' You know, 'cause we don't have to recycle literally everything to eat and breath."

Beca laughs again and swings the skiff into a tight, hot, burn that forces Emily deep into the foam of their crash couch. When they pull out again they're on an intercept course with _Theo's Red Rocket_.

"Thing is, they call _themselves_ 'shit eaters,' 'cause of the fact that they do. One of the things I always hated back at court was all the double-talk and ass kissing, rock hoppers don't go in for that shit. Good way to get people killed, the way they live."

Emily hesitates, then, "I- I didn't mean to, you know, be insulting. Or xenophobic, or racist. Whatever you want to call it. I never thought about what it— "

"I know, I know, I wasn't- look, rock hoppers aren't any better really. They might not hide that shit the same we did back at court but it was still there. Once, I- shit, I'm pretty sure I saw a man kill five other people because one of their fathers cheated on his father, like twenty years before. He was cool as could be in the aftermath, and no one else said anything 'cause the other crew was sloppy. And just because they say it to your face, they don't mean it any less."

The yacht loomed closer up ahead, the maw of its hanger gaping open.

"People are people all over. Part of what made me… " they can hear Beca gulp, "Fall in love with you was that, you just, you're bright and shiny and not that at all. You made me want to be less of that, to stop running a little and face it."

Emily is sort of stunned by the way Beca is talking. They've talked about some of this before, the things she didn't like about her life back at court, playing pretend as the perfect daughter of perfect monarchs and trying to ignore the insults and jibes thrown her way by a court that didn't like her. Had a number of long conversations about exactly what would happen to both of them, after they were married.

But through it all they always felt a little bit of something held back. Or not held back, but maybe held in reserve?

They're sure that there'll be more conversations over the years where they each discover new things about each other, their parents have been pretty clear with them about what marriage is like. Ups and downs. And all the stuff in between. This though feels important and monumental.

It feels like Beca opening herself up. Basically it makes Emily want to kiss her, long and hard, and then to lots of other things.

"Get us back to the ship. _Now_ , please," they say with a growl.

And they can feel Beca perk up, startled, before they catch the nape of her neck — just visible through the clear impact resistant plastic of her helmet — begin to redden. She nods jerkily.

Not that there's anything she can do, safely docking happens at precisely one speed.


End file.
